Dr. Amr Al-Maddah has been the chief planning and strategy officer at the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah since February last year. He was previously director of project management and chairman of the ministry’s Development and Change Management Committee between April 2018 and February 2019. Al-Maddah has a bachelor’s degree in electrical, electronics and communications engineering from King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah and a master’s degree in intelligent systems engineering from Osaka University. His doctorate is also in intelligent systems engineering and was gained at the same Japanese institution. He worked as a premises engineer at Saudi Hollandi Bank between 2007 and 2008, and as a researcher at Arai Laboratory, Osaka, between April and October 2008. He was a research associate at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center between December 2013 and April 2014. Between April 2016 and April 2017, he worked at the Saudi Research and Marketing Group at Arinat as chief operating officer, and was chief operating manager at Manga Productions at the Misk Foundation between March 2017 and April 2018. Al-Maddah was director of business incubators at King Abdul Aziz University between January 2015 and March 2016, a consultant to the university’s vice president for business and knowledge creativity between July 2014 and July 2016, and has been assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department since April 2014. The Ministry of Hajj and Umrah has announced that pilgrims must wait 14 days before booking another date for Umrah, and that the first Umrah will start Oct. 4. Al-Maddah said that 35,000 requests have been registered so far to perform Umrah.